Property Crime Rates in the United States: A Macrodynamic Analysis, 1947-1977; With Ex Ante Forecasts for the Mid-1980s

Abstract

This paper presents several macrodynamic social indicator models of post-World War II trends in robbery, burglary, and automobile theft rates for the United States. A theory of the ways in wich changes in criminal opportunity affect these Index Crime property crime rates is deveoped. Definitions and postulates are presented from which we derive a main theorem which states that, other things being equal, a decrease in the density of the population in physical locations that are normally sites of primary groups should lead to an increase in criminal opportunities and hence in property crime rates. Corollaries to the main theorem are presented and tested after operationalization of relevant independent and control variables such as the residential population density ratio, the unemployment rate, age structure, total consumer expenditures, and automobiles per capita. Stochastic difference equations, used to evaluate the theory,indicate that the models implied by the theory exhibit good statistical fit to the recorded property crime rates in question over the 26-year estimation period, 1947-72. In addition, these models provide reasonably accurate expost forecasts of observed annual property crime rates over the five-year forecast period, 1973 through 1977. The paper concludes with a discussion of ex ante forecasted equilibrium levels of the three property crime rates for the mid-1980s implied by the estimated models. The forecasts indicate that the robbery and automobile theft rates should drop00 substantially in the 1980s from their recent levels, whereas the burglary rate may continue to grow or at least drop less.